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In April 1861, Dick and Tally Simpson, sons of South Carolina Congressman Richard F. Simpson, enlisted in Company A of the Third South Carolina Volunteers of the Confederate army. Their letters home--published here for the first time--read like a historical novel, complete with plot, romance, character, suspense, and tragedy. In their last year of college when the war broke out, Dick and Tally were hastily handed their diplomas so they could volunteer for military duty. Dick was twenty; Tally was twenty-two. Well educated, intelligent, and thoughtful young men, Dick and Tally cared deeply for their country, their family, and their comrades-in-arms and wrote frequently to their loved ones in ...
On the third day of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee launched a magnificent attack. For pure pageantry it was unsurpassed, and it also marked the centerpiece of the war, both time-wise and in terms of how the conflict had turned a cornerÑfrom persistent Confederate hopes to impending Rebel despair. But PickettÕs Charge was crushed by the Union defenders that day, having never had a chance in the first place. The ConfederacyÕs real Òhigh tideÓ at Gettysburg had come the afternoon before, during the swirling conflagration when LongstreetÕs corps first entered the battle, when the Federals just barely held on. The foremost Rebel spearhead on that second day of the battle was BarksdaleÕs Mississ...
Alexander and James Campbell, born and raised in Scotland, immigrated to the United States as teenagers in the 1850s and settled in vastly different regions of the country - Alexander in New York City and James in Charleston, South Carolina. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Alexander and James opted to fight for their adopted states and causes: Alexander enlisted in the 79th New York "Highlanders" and James in the 1st South Carolina ("Charleston") Battalion. "Him on the One Side and Me on the Other" tells the remarkable story of these two brothers divided by the Civil War. Through their wartime letters to family and to each other, the brothers expose the deep fractures in American society caused by the most destructive war in this country's history. In the most dramatic moment in this story of the brothers' wartime experiences, the letters reveal a near-reunion on the battlefield of Secessionville, South Carolina, on June 16, 1862. There Alexander was part of the Union force that assaulted Tower Battery, a fort inhabited by James and his Confederate comrades.
Between 1848 and 1865 white southerners felt the grounds of nationhood shift beneath their feet. The conflict over slavery that led to the Civil War forced them to confront the difficult problems of nationalism. What made a nation a nation? Could an individual or a group change nationality at will? What were the rights and responsibilities of national citizenship? Why should nations exist at all? As they contemplated these questions, white southerners drew on their long experience as Americans and their knowledge of nationalism in the wider world. This was true of not just the radical secessionists who shattered the Union in 1861, but also of the moderate majority who struggled to balance th...
Since I began Civil War re-enacting in 1988, there have been two schools of thought regarding the uniform of the Confederate soldiers. One is that the Rebels were never ragged, that was just a romantic myth started after the war. The other school of thought is that the Rebels were always ragged and wore whatever they could get their hands on. I decided that the best way to discover the truth is by investigating, what the soldiers themselves said regarding their clothing through letters, diaries and memoirs. This book uses the soldiers own words regarding Confederate uniforms and includes many surprising anecdotes and some "firsts" regarding incidents of the Civil War.
Presenting America's slaveholders as men and women who were intelligent, honourable, and pious, this text asks how people who were admirable in so many ways could have presided over a social system that proved itself and enormity and inflicted horrors on their slaves.
The fight for the Wheatfield at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, has long been one of the most confusing and misunderstood engagements of that famous battle until now. Gettysburg’s Bloody Wheatfield provides readers with a blow-by-blow description of the fight where one out of every three soldiers was a casualty.
Scott L. Mingus Sr. and Eric J. Wittenberg, the authors of more than forty Civil War books, have once again teamed up to present a history of the opening moves of the Gettysburg Campaign in the two-volume study “If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania”: The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac March to Gettysburg. This compelling study is one of the first to integrate the military, media, political, social, economic, and civilian perspectives with rank-and-file accounts from the soldiers of both armies as they inexorably march toward their destiny at Gettysburg. This first installment covers June 3–21, 1863, while the second, spanning June 22–30, completes the march and ...
Of all the places and events in this nation's history, Gettysburg may well be the name best known to Americans. Millions flock each year to the little town in south-central Pennsylvania where more than 135 years ago the largest, bloodiest, and most dramatic battle of the Civil War raged across the now-peaceful hills and meadows. The subject of an epic movie and a best-selling work of fiction, the battle continues to fascinate Americans. Indeed, for most Americans, Gettysburg is the Civil War. In Beneath a Northern Sky, eminent Civil War historian Steven E. Woodworth offers a balanced and thorough overview of the entire battle, its drama, and its meaning. From Lee's decision to take his heret...
The fall of the Confederacy proved traumatic for a people who fought with the belief that God was on their side. Yet, as Eugene D. Genovese writes in A Consuming Fire, Southern Christians continued to trust in the Lord's will. The churches had long defended "southern rights" and insisted upon the divine sanction for slavery, but they also warned that God was testing His people, who must bring slavery up to biblical standards or face the wrath of an angry God. In the eyes of proslavery theorists, clerical and lay, social relations and material conditions affected the extent and pace of the spread of the Gospel and men's preparation to receive it. For proslavery spokesmen, "Christian slavery" ...